


out of the dark confinement

by ishichan



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishichan/pseuds/ishichan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her confession Abigail clings to Hannibal and he proposes a way to help her confront her demons. Post 1x9 "Trou Normand".</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of the dark confinement

She feels calmer now, somehow, with the pressure of his arms around her. It helps her breath. The images still flash through her mind though. Each face, each smile is burnt into her retinas and she helped end them all. She remembers how her heart had sped up each time, how she would feel nauseous – only it wasn’t disgust and not fear either, not solely anyway. Part of it made her feel exhilarated and she had wished each night that it wasn’t true.

She digs her fingernails into Dr. Lecter’s shirt when she asks if she could stay the night. He doesn’t require any explanation on her feelings of loneliness and fear to agree. A tired smile graces her lips as she finally lets go of him.

“Thank you.” Her voice sounds muffled and her throat feels raw, she realizes. The tears and her confession had taken her strength away from her.

“Why don’t you go upstairs, Abigail, and wait for me while I say goodbye to my guests.”

Abigail is glad. She doesn’t want to face Will again tonight, not before she knows what to make of their relationship, changed as it is with his new knowledge of her. Alana would have a disapproving look on her face, because she thinks Dr. Lecter and she were getting too close and of course Freddie Lounds would watch them like a hawk, always hunting for more information.

* * *

While she sits in the guest room he had assigned to her, she examines her surroundings carefully. The bed seems heavenly soft, with sheets coloured a calming blue, which naturally fit in perfectly with the turquoise of the walls. There is a painting that catches her eye. She cannot make out anything specific, but in her mind the black and dark green formed a wild forest. There were red smudges too, so dark she almost missed them and the sight makes her shiver and move on.

Every decorative item looks like it was specifically placed, creating a far more stylish and beautiful air than she had in her dull and clinical hospital room.

It is a little hard, imagining herself sleeping here, living here even just for the night. The order she finds herself surrounded by makes her feel as if she is a deep dark space of entropy, which would destroy anything she touched. And yet the thought was strangely comforting. She could be here, breath the air and nestle into the bed, carve out a space of her own inside of Dr. Lecter’s walls.

The knock calls her out of her reverie. When Dr. Lecter enters she does her best to smile for him, face tilted up towards him from her position on the bed. “Did everything go alright?”

“Of course it did. Will and Alana are no less interested in your wellbeing than I am.” He puts the clothes he had been carrying – clothes she presumed were meant for her – down by the foot of the bed.

“You should take a bath, Abigail. It will help you relax and there is, after all, something cleansing about it, not just for your body, but for your soul as well.” His face is somewhat impassive, like he wears it most times, but with a certain gentleness to it that she likes to believe is reserved for her.

Despite all of this she knows there is something sinister to him. She had known from the moment she had heard his voice for the first time, but she couldn’t be sure, not until tonight. Not until she put the fork in her mouth and let the taste unfold in her mouth. It was unsettling, to say the least. It made her heart speed up and her stomach flutter. It made her trust him and distrust him at the same time and it was also what made her admit, to herself and him, what she had done with her father.

Abigail only nods; she wants him to know she trusts him and the prospect of a hot bath doesn’t exactly seem unpleasant.

“Perfect. Come with me, please.” Before she can say anything more on the subject, Hannibal vanishes into the hallway. He is already preparing the bath when she enters the bathroom, using several bath salts with the same precision and assurance as if it was one of his recipes. Only when he is done, he faces her again. “You can get in now. I will get you some towels.”

A little wary, she waits until he has left the room to strip. The water has just the perfect temperature when she dips in her foot. The warmth and the smells engulf her like a cloud when she lowers herself into the tub fully. After all these strained weeks, her stay in the clinic, it feels like the closest to heaven she will ever get. A sigh escapes her lips just as the door opens again, for Hannibal and the promised towels.

Instinctively she wants to cover herself, but forces herself not to. When she looks at him she can tell that he is not really looking at her body. His eyes don’t wander and nor does he strain to keep looking at her face only. _He doesn’t want me_ , she thinks, _not in that way at least_.

She is unsure if she should say something and even more unsure of what she should say, so she keeps quiet and simply watches him. He puts down the towels on the counter and her eyes follow him meticulously as he walks around the tub and settles himself behind her with a soothing smile.

 “I thought I could wash your back for you and perhaps massage out some of those knots you undoubtedly have in your back. If that is alright with you, of course.”

She follows his request – they are always phrased as requests, even though they feel like orders to her. She can hear him tip a sponge into the water and she can hear the water streaming out of it once he raises it to her skin. It feels a little ticklish when he moves it across the plain of her back and Abigail can’t stop herself from trembling a the tiniest bit. She feels that he might comment on it, waits for it, but he remains silent and continues his work.

When he finally puts down the sponge, she means to lean back, but suddenly his hands are at her neck, keeping her firmly in place. Her body goes rigid the instant his thumb touches her scar.

“Relax, Abigail. We are not quite finished here.” She doesn’t like that she cannot see his face, so she twists her head again. He is smiling for her again. “It is nothing special - simply a neck massage my dear.”

So she lets him press his fingers into her skin, trace the lines and simply tries to enjoy the feeling of his skin against hers. He feels warmer than she had thought.

“Now try to remember.” His thumb is at the back of her neck this time, where her hair begins, gently rubbing. He doesn’t lower his voice. “Try to remember the last time your father took you out for one of his hunts.”

Abigail swallows. There is no mistaking which of his hunts he means.

“Try to remember her face. Her voice. She represents you, you know that. It is her or you who dies. Imagine being face to face with her and make your choice again.” She doesn’t know if he only refers to luring the girls into his father’s traps or the choice she made when she killed Nicholas Boyle as well. It doesn’t really matter.

She remembers the train, the other girl’s smile but even so her choice was not agonizing to her this time, perhaps because the girl was already dead. Abigail was still here. That was worth more than anything. It was worth more than guilt.

When he asks her to do the same thing with the girl before that, he moves on to her shoulders. Her ribcage is next.

He makes her work through every single one of them. When they arrive at the last one – the first one – her nerves are coming back a little. She will never be able to forget that day.

“That was the first day I helped to kill someone,” she whispers the words as if someone could be overhearing their talk.

“Yes, but it is a day long gone. All the days between that day and this one you lived, Abigail. That is nothing to be ashamed of. Tilt your head back please.” He adds the last sentence as if they were just talking about the weather, not murder.

He uses the shower head to properly wet her hair before reaching for a bottle of shampoo. His hands are cradling her head now, fingers spreading and pulling back, rubbing patterns into her skin. “Tell me about that day. Tell me about the girl.”

Abigail feels tired all of a sudden and all resistance she had left had slipped away from her hours ago. She gives him every little detail she can remember, down to the perfume she thinks the girl wore that day. By the time they are done she feels completely empty, as if she had poured all her thoughts out of her head. 

“Close your eyes, Abigail,” he says, and she thinks he might be smiling proudly at her progress. The spray of warm water hits her head and her face and washes the suds away. Once he is done, they are done for the night – she can tell. He leaves her to dry herself off and get dressed in her room.

* * *

He does come to see her again, when she is already in bed, blankets drawn up as far as her stomach. He sets down a glass of milk on the nightstand - sweetened with honey and laced with a little cognac to help her fall asleep, he says.  Before he can leave she purposefully searches his eyes and bites down on her lip. “It feels unreal to me, that even after everything, someone – you – could be so good to me. Thank you.” It only earns her a wry smile, but she notices that his eyes spark up a little too.

“It’s time to sleep, Abigail.”


End file.
